Masha Volkova

Paintings of the Ukraine War

After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the internet was flooded with videos and photos of what was happening there -- bombing, death, and destruction, filmed on phones and posted on the internet by the people trying to process what was happening around them. The nature of these kinds of videos on the internet, especially on such a scale, is to some degree ephemeral -- many of them can't be easily found anymore, years later, having vanished into the void where old social media posts go. At the same time, they are overwhelming to the point of creating numbness and derealization in the viewer. In rendering some of these images -- these moments -- in oils, I've hoped to give them the gravity they deserve, and to preserve the experiences of those present and gone. For myself, it was also a way to slow down and actually process the fear, rage, grief, and helplessness of watching my country of origin commit these atrocities.

Cellist

Church

Girl

Soldier

Violinist

Kharkiv

Apartment

Man

Protest

Devastation

Mass Grave

Death

Arrest

III

Russian Political Prisoners

In 2022, the Russian government rapidly progressed from merely oppressive and corrupt to overtly tyrannical. Anti-war protests were brutally put down and independent news sources winked out of existence as the first few months of the war progressed; those arrested were, and still are, often tortured. Despite these repressions, many people have and continue to speak out against the war and these policies. In these portraits, I have tried to bring across the sense of some of the people who have been imprisoned, not as Prisoners but as someone who could be sitting across the table from you, telling a story, or some joke they've heard. These are people from any number of backgrounds; some of them have been released since I've painted them; some have died; some are still in prison, doing their best to survive in inhumane conditions. If you would like to do something to help them, you can write a letter through OVD-Info, or find a letter-writing group near you.

About the Artist

Masha Volkova is a Russian-American artist originally from Moscow. After moving to the United States, she moved around all over the country, at one point traveling with Renaissance Festivals for about 7 years. After spending the last bit of her 20s and the beginning of her 30s lurking around Pennsylvania, Oregon, and parts of the South, she moved to Minneapolis in 2022. She has been studying anthropology on and off, and working on making art and deeper community connections since. Her art pulls from Victorian fairy tale illustrations, surrealist and magical realist traditions, and her favorite graphic novels.

Selected Works

Paintings of the Ukraine War

Russian Political Prisoners

About the Artist